Comfort of Understanding
by GirlDressedInBlack
Summary: The Mistress escapes from that ship, escapes her death for now, and finally sits down. She sits on an uninhabited planet and mourns, not moving until she is interrupted by someone she didn't truly expect to ever meet. Slight River/Missy


The Mistress comes to in the remains of a battleground. She stands on aching limbs, just managing to force herself off the ground.

By her side aching fingers clench into a dirt covered palm.

She lifts her hand, watching her fingers move like some strange insect's death throes. The movements are jerky stops and starts which become more fluid as she repeats them. It forces an itching pain through her which almost makes her cry out.

She seals her lips shut, clenching her teeth as she works through it, working every joint in her body back to the point where they operate without delay.

Every inch of her is shaking, trembling.

She lets tendrils of her mind slip out, scouring the ship for signs of _him_ \- Theta- the Doctor.

Nothing.

The leaves beneath her are cleaned of their ash coating, strips of green shining amid the grime.

The Mistress leaves.

It's all she can do.

She descends into the bowels of the cyber-city again, reprogramming the cybermen at earliest convenience. Telling them to get the ship out of there. To save what they can. To stop converting.

The whole time their robotic voices chorus outside the door and their weapons sizzle at the wall. She hears metallic thumps and screeches but there's nothing she can do but keep reprogramming- try and finish what the Doctor started. Do it better.

They have no emotions any more and it's a mercy she will not take from them.

Then she cobbles together a ship that can leave that place from the technology there. She can't stay. She won't stay.

So she leaves.

She can't regenerate and the Doctor is gone or else dead and her limbs still don't move without a tremble at the very least.

She can't do anything about any of that.

She won't be able to recover from the nerve damage ever and she can't just get more regenerations (barring interference by the Time Lords but she isn't willing to pay their prices any more. She isn't willing to be their attack-dog).

So she leaves.

And she finds a small planet, barely a planet really, and she sets her ship down and watches the universe spinning around her. She sits down on its dusty surface and just waits until she feels like moving again.

If she doesn't feel like it that's okay too.

She doesn't know if she's been sitting for seconds or years before she hears the crunch of footsteps.

"Hello. What is anyone doing on a deserted planet like this?" Asks a voice. It probably belongs to the stranger. It's warm.

The Mistress knows she should turn. It's polite. She doesn't.

She reaches out a spark of her mind, enough to get a feeling for the stranger.

The stranger is very strange.

They're human- partly- but there's this tinge there that only comes from Time Lords.

Her fingers tighten their grip around her other hand.

"You're the Doctor's wife." She says, ignoring the question, "River Song. That's your name- he said it was." The Mistress looks up then, tired eyes alighting finally on a tan face haloed by masses of curly hair.

The woman's eyes sharpen but her lips spell out amusement and curiosity.

"You know him I take it." She says.

The Mistress looks away, throat caught with memories of him and _she doesn't know yet_.

"I do." She says.

Her eyes stare off into the depths of the universe.

There is silence. The Mistress doesn't want to break it but she does anyway.

Somehow she wants the connection to this other person who loves the Doctor- needs it.

"I would have hated your very existence years ago." She speaks, voice sounding ancient and tired even to her own ears.

The Mistress almost senses the woman tense up, ready for a fight. Gravel shifts.

"Oh?" Says that voice, challenge within it, "What changed?" And there's some kind of inkling of understanding of personal depths travelled- a tenuous hope of it- of a connection- in the other woman's mind too.

"I did." The Time Lady admits.

"Why?" Is the immediate response.

The Mistress turns again, places a palm by her side to balance her, feels it falter before she pushes it to support her weight. Pins it down. Still.

She watches the woman's eyes travel to it, sympathy flooding her gaze as she look to her eyes. The Mistress meets it evenly, chin tilting up.

"I couldn't keep going like that. It wasn't sustainable." She says, eyelids slipping closed and lips moving by themselves, telling her truths to this woman who doesn't know who she is but is nonetheless similar to her.

"Every war. Every fight. Every battle. Every duel." Her voice is heavy, dragging pauses between each sentence.

"With him." The Mistress says, opening her eyes again, lips parted softly as she exhales.

"Broke off another little piece of me." She finishes.

There's silence between the two then and the Mistress just watches the confusion and slight upset on the other woman's face.

"Who are you?" River asks eventually, holding her ground.

"You know." Says Missy, needing her to tell her. Her gaze remains fixed on the hybrid's for a long moment, hope and sorrow burning in her eyes before she turns away again.

"You know." She mumbles, placing her trembling hand back in her lap.

Quiet comes between them once again.

Footsteps.

A set of dull thumps as the woman clad in worn leather and tight jeans sits beside her.

Warmth, emanating from her.

"You're the Master. Aren't you?" Asks River, "He did this to you." She clarifies.

Missy nods, incapable of words.

"Kind of." She admits when she can speak, words she didn't know she had thought, "I asked him." She says. The Mistress doesn't look at River but feels River's gaze travelling across her.

What does she see?

A mass murderer? Her husband's friend from college? A broken old woman?

She wants to ask but she doesn't.

A hand slides around her shoulders, containing the shaking and the Mistress feels herself lean into this strange woman- one of the Doctor's wives.

"What do you mean kind of?" Asks River.

The Mistress closes her eyes, listens to the beating of River's single heart. Her arm is warm around her.

She finds her words.

"I used the name Mistress to fool him. It stuck and changed with me as I changed. Master feels-" The Mistress struggles with the emotion.

"Like it doesn't fit. Like clothes you wore in another body when you try them on again." River says, understanding implicitly.

Missy nods.

The woman's arm squeezes her shoulder lightly, a comfort.

The Mistress rests her head against the almost-human's neck. Hair brushes against her ear and neck, trying to envelop her.

"Exactly." She murmurs, tears slipping through. She raises a hand to wipe at them and manages to clear a few before River takes her hand and stills it, curling her fingers around the Time Lady's.

"You don't need to get rid of your tears." River says gently, palm running up and down the Mistress' arm, "They fall by themselves." She says softly.

"Okay." The Mistress says, voice breaking.

She wraps her shaking left arm around River's back, so much stronger than hers, and holds tight.

"Okay." She says again, surrendering herself to tears and squeezing back at River's hand.


End file.
